The Comboni Family is a community of people that originated around the person of a missionary, Saint Daniel Comboni. A man born almost two centuries ago, on 15 March 1831, in a small rural village overlooking Lake Garda, Limone [Limone sul Garda is a picturesque village on the northwestern shore of Lake Garda, Italy. Famous for its historic terraced lemon groves and stunning views, it offers a serene escape, a charming old town center, and the world-renowned longevity of its inhabitants. Editor’s note]. 

It was from Limone sul Garda that Daniel set off to study in Verona, at Don Mazza’s Institute, and to understand, with a foresight that remains undiminished, how a distant continent like Africa needed to undertake a journey that began with itself, with its people, who have long been–and still are–plundered of their natural and human riches. 

[Don Mazza was an Italian Catholic priest known for his work in the African missions of the 19th century. He was dedicated to both the evangelization of Central Africa and equal access to a good education. He served as a teacher for over three decades as well as a chaplain and was known for his dedication to the Christian formation of children. Editor’s note] 

Daniel, therefore, called for a mission and a Church capable of uniting forces to save themselves through the salvation of Africa, its peoples, and thus of the Church itself. The same yearning that drives the Comboni Family today.

In that Plan for the Regeneration of Africa, which Comboni, through a charismatic intuition, began to dream of at the foot of Saint Peter’s tomb on 15 September 1864, a different world is envisaged, encapsulated in a motto: “Save Africa with Africa.” A motto that dreams of making people the protagonists of their present and future, starting from the daily realities in which they live, from the ancient and modern forms of slavery imposed upon them by an increasingly greedy and harsh Western wealth.

Comboni knew that the first instrument for salvation was knowledge, and he dedicated himself above all to education–of teachers and craftspeople as well as catechists, nuns, and priests–so that each person, within their own community, could find their way of living the Gospel, proximity, and sharing.

MISSIONARY MOVEMENT

Thus the embryo of a missionary movement was born that brought together religious and lay people, men and women, local and foreign, capable of sharing needs and interests in the complementarity of an objective based on the awareness that each person is saved if all are saved, that each person can be what they are if others have the same possibility.

 A vision of humanity that was not confined to the African continent but extended its reach across the whole of Europe, which needed to know that then-distant land and contribute to its salvation. Understanding the importance not only of education but also of information, Comboni conceived of a magazine The Annals of the Good Shepherd.

Daniel’s era was a distant one–an era of the slave trade, of great discrimination based on color and religious differences. For this reason, Comboni understood the need to unite the worlds of knowledge of his time: the civil, cultural, and political worlds, all striving towards a common cause. His dream transcended time; his dream remains relevant, not only because his words came true–“I shall die, but my work will not die”–but because even today we live in a time of slavery and supremacist thinking.

Daniel’s work saw the birth of the religious institutes of the Comboni Sisters and Missionaries, and more recently the Comboni Secular Missionaries and the Comboni Lay Missionaries. Thus, the yearning “If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the mission” has continued to unfold over time, in the lives of those who have chosen to continue the Plan, to translate it into the journey of a family, the Comboni Family.

Men and women capable of broadening the geographical horizons of that dream, opening their hearts to serve the poorest and most abandoned, as Comboni said, present in Africa, Europe, America and Asia; in those frontier places, on the peripheries of a global world that is expressed as a common home, the home that the Comboni Family inhabits in every place where it lives its daily life.

We present you, therefore, our Family, a Family that follows in the footsteps of Saint Daniel Comboni, hoping that you will wish to be involved in a group of people that goes beyond physically being in the same place doing the same things, which means mutual sharing and welcoming the richness that lies in each person’s uniqueness, where the distinctiveness of another becomes a gift that helps one better understand one’s own identity. 

COMBONI SISTERS

We were born from Saint Daniel Comboni’s great dream, from an ideal that fills our hearts. Comboni left us an inheritance that is grace and responsibility, gift and achievement. He saw in our identity as missionary women the image of the women of the Gospel; indeed, he wrote in one of his letters: “If I did not have so many occupations, I would like to give you an idea of the apostolate of these sisters, the true image of the ancient women of the Gospel” (Writings, 3554).

Since then, the witness of Mary Magdalene, the Myrrh-bearers, the Samaritan woman, the woman who kneads bread, the barren women made fertile, together with that of the other disciples of Jesus, inspires our path and our missionary dedication as Comboni sisters.

Like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who prepare perfumes and, moved by love, go to the tomb to anoint the Master’s body, like these three women–a small community like many of our communities–we feel encouraged to set out when it is still dark, with eyes and ears attentive to the groans of humanity and the cosmos, to care for the most wounded life, for all forms of life and even for death; to perform gestures that seem meaningless; to care for what other people have abandoned; to recognize the signs of rebirth present in history and to be generative ourselves; to be lovers of life and to have the courage and docility to penetrate the Mystery and allow ourselves to be transformed by It.

Many of us know arid lands, apparently lifeless, but experience tells us that even the desert carries within it a generative potential, just as the barren women of the Bible hold within themselves a fertility that no one can take from them. It is precisely in geographical and existential deserts that we proclaim the source of living water. Often, the realities to which we are sent appear as barren wombs, made so by exploitation and violence suffered, yet they are open to welcome us in the hope of rebirth.

Our mission is to be bread, nourishment, and joy; an existence given to alleviate human suffering, to live through sharing, and to mobilize authentic and humanizing relationships. The woman in the parable combines flour, water, and yeast; our hands mix our knowledge with the knowledge of the peoples to whom we are sent. We knead the bread of existence in synergy with the forces of other women and men, of religious and civil organizations, to build relationships that are common and supportive.

The paths travelled are many: deserts and forests, peripheries and frontiers, poor roads, rivers and tarmac, villages and cities. We express ourselves through different ministries but with a single desire: to care for life, for that which is impoverished and exploited, which includes human bodies but also the body-territories of the earth, water, and forests, equally impoverished and exploited. Care is a path of reciprocity because as we care we feel cared for, and also because when one being is violated, the entire web of life suffers. Care is a communal and political act. It is tenderness but also transgression against a dominant system.

SAMARITAN WOMAN

The unnamed woman who dialogues with Jesus, the Samaritan woman, reminds us of the capacity to go beyond one’s own limits and boundaries, to establish relationships in which power circulates, to recognize ourselves as capable of leaving our own securities and convictions to launch ourselves towards unprecedented paths. The Samaritan woman and the Jewish man who meets her at the well speak to us of the possible encounter between different ethnic groups and the overcoming of prejudices that separate men and women. Their dialogue moves from the material to the spiritual sphere, as often happens in mission when, from satisfying primary needs, one arrives, with humility, to speak of the Mystery, to witness to the God-Presence who breaks every scheme in which we try to confine Him.

“Wisdom cries out in the streets, in the squares she raises her voice”; Jesus proclaims in the streets and inside homes; Comboni ventures into courts and deserts. Nourished by a feminine, biblical, and mystical-political spirituality, our steps follow in their footsteps, proclaimers of relationships of mutuality, of a humanity reconciled with itself and with all creation.